Snowdon is a dummy

where you said every single foreign cable had to be turned over from AT&T to intelligence. If it is such a historical fact, should be pretty easy for you to pull something up.

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-prism-shamrock-history-spying-telegraphs/

In August of 1945, U.S. Army representatives met in secret with the country’s three major telegraph companies, ITT World International, RCA Global, and Western Union. They explained that the Army Signal Security Agency wanted copies of all telegrams sent to and from the United States. World War II was coming to a close and the top secret, multinational Manhattan project had proven the power of foreign intelligence. Executives from the three companies agreed to comply, provided they were assured by then-Attorney General Tom Clark that it was not illegal for them to do so. There is no record any such assurance was officially given, but the operation went ahead anyway.

With that, the organization that became the National Security Agency—the “No Such Agency”—launched its first large-scale domestic surveillance project and set out establishing the policies and practices that would one day produce PRISM.

The telegraph operation, codenamed SHAMROCK, was a massive undertaking in the time before digital data storage: Once a day, beginning in late 1945, the Army sent couriers to telegraph offices in New York; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; and San Antonio to pick up all their international telegrams—which were stored at first on hole-punched paper and later on reels of magnetic tape. Analysts then sifted through the communiques, looking for encrypted intelligence and evidence of Soviet spying.

http://www.todaysengineer.org/2013/Nov/history.asp


Between the World Wars, the American Cipher Bureau (known as the “Black Chamber”) under Herbert Yardley obtained the coded telegrams of foreign governments through the cooperation of the presidents of the Western Union Telegraph Company and the Postal Telegraph Company. This was “warrantless data collection” and it occurred during peacetime. In many cases, Yardley simply asked the presidents of the telegraph companies to allow intelligence officers to copy the messages in the telegraph offices. Sometimes the Cipher Bureau obtained copies by bribing telegraph company employees. - See more at:

In addition to the telegrams supplied by the telegraph companies, the Postal Censorship Office supplied the Black Chamber with intercepted communications. Mail and cable censorship stations existed at Balboa-Cristobal in Panama, Brownsville, Chicago, El Paso, Honolulu, Laredo, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans, Nogales, San Antonio, San Francisco, San Juan, Seattle, (postal mail), and Akron, Baltimore, Honolulu, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Panama, San Antonio, San Juan, Seattle, Tucson, and Reykjavik, Iceland (cable). - See more at: http://www.todaysengineer.org/2013/Nov/history.asp#sthash.d8vD3C4O.dpuf

well meaning intelligence people trying to find intelligence on Russian operations with good reason. Furthermore, it wasn't ever established that those practices were in themselves illegal, merely questions raised.

I have you on ignore so I do not get to see your silliness most of the time but I broke down to read your last posting.

Yes Frank a few thousands terrorists is enough of a threat to removed our constitutional rights with special note that none of these massive spying programs can be shown to had been all that helpful in finding terrorists or stopping their attacks.

I know you are under the opinion that our constitutions rights are worthless...

...in any case as we can all trust our government and our leadership completely even if the founding fathers did not have that level of trust in the government they was forming.

Back to having you on ignore.

ve·rac·i·ty
vəˈrasədē/
noun
conformity to facts; accuracy.
"officials expressed doubts concerning the veracity of the story"
synonyms: truthfulness, truth, accuracy, correctness, faithfulness, fidelity; More
habitual truthfulness.
"voters should be concerned about his veracity and character"

Since you are known for stretching the truth, why not for once provide a source to give context for some of your statements? I have no interest in doing a lot of homework for all your many statements, since you bring the statements, it is your place to provide the source, otherwise it is unproven statements.

@revelette2,
Your Quote:
well meaning intelligence people trying to find intelligence on Russian operations with good reason. Furthermore, it wasn't ever established that those practices were in themselves illegal, merely questions raised.


Bill's response:

Quote:

Well meaning they might had been or not however even will meaning people can be a threat to our freedoms.

Next while they was looking for enemy agents by way of reading everyone messages who have send oversea telegrams there was spy rings and American traitors walking out of high security areas with suitcases full of secrets and in the case of Jonathan Pollard it was in fact literally suitcases full of secrets.

Maybe you can post an example or two otherwise but I know of no traitors that was found out by way of massive spying on American citizens

.

Maybe you can post an example or two otherwise but I know of no traitors that was found out by way of massive spying on American citizens.[/b]

It had to do with the cold war so the context makes all the difference in the world.

when to my knowledge (lately) only Clapper did.

lies to congress when to my knowledge (lately) only Clapper did.

@BillRM,
You are full of hyperbolic statements, stretching three separate instances into long standing practices. It is your right, as it is my right not to think it is.

it is my right not to think it is.

Salon.com
Wednesday, Oct 2, 2013 05:39 PM EDT

In so many words, NSA director Keith Alexander admitted Wednesday that the Obama administration had issued misleading information about terror plots and their foiling to bolster support for the government’s vast surveillance apparatus.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy pushed Alexander to admit that plot numbers had been fudged in a revealing interchange:

“There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots,” said Leahy. The Vermont Democrat then asked the NSA chief to admit that only 13 out of a previously cited 54 cases of foiled plots were genuinely the fruits of the government’s vast dragnet surveillance systems:

“These weren’t all plots, and they weren’t all foiled,” Leahy said, asking Alexander, “Would you agree with that, yes or no?”

“Yes,” replied Alexander...